Modern medicine's successes and failures in the field of skin organ transplants are the product of historical trial and error. However, as society now deals with the ethical, socioeconomic and legal issues surrounding what many term a "miracle" of science, the ramifications of transplants, organ transplants in particular, have gone far beyond what was imagined. Each year, the lives of thousands of people in the United States are dependent on this surgical procedures causing scientists to push the boundaries of transplants even further. These unchartered waters are both exciting and frightening.
Though there were references to skin transplantations in the early Egyptian manuscripts dating from 2000 B.C., and the 1800s witnessed the success of such operations, it has been the advancements in the last four decades which have brought about the billion dollar business of organ transplants and created an era of "great expectations" in the minds of the public. "Of all the medical miracles of the 20th century, none enthralls us as much as organ transplantation" (Colen "Desperate Measures" 84).
Today, transplant operations include not only those of skin, but of kidneys, heart, lung, liver, and pancreas as well as bone and bone marrow, corneas and heart valves. Outside of the current research in brain or neural tissue transplant, these operations are now routine if not always successful surgical procedures. Most transplants are used in the treatment of diseases and are limited only by the scarcity of donor organs and the expense of the operation (Schroeder 1088).
It was in the 1950s when, stimulated by the large number of patients suffering from end-stage renal disease (kidney disease) and the expense of the known blood cleansing procedure, dialysis, the first kidney transplant was carried out in secret in Boston's Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (Colen "Desperate Measures" 84). The success of the operation astounded the public an...